


marked me like a bloodstain (I knew you)

by Ceara_Einin



Series: Saving What We Love - 2020 [5]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Canon compliant-ish, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Hinted Reylo, Jedi Rey (Star Wars), POV Rey (Star Wars), Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Pre-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Rey Needs A Hug (Star Wars), Saving What We Love 2020, Self-Doubt, Self-Reflection, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, because look me in the eyes and tell me I'm wrong, hints of Dark Rey, redeemable Ben Solo, reylo established force bonds after TLJ
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 23:46:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29908890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ceara_Einin/pseuds/Ceara_Einin
Summary: Rey goes too far on a mission. She's supposed to be the last Jedi, but how much of a Jedi is she, really? Ben would understand. But Ben isn't here unless the Force wills it. And perhaps Ben understanding would only make the guilt worse.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: Saving What We Love - 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2057262
Comments: 4
Kudos: 11





	marked me like a bloodstain (I knew you)

**Author's Note:**

> Day 5 of #SavingWhatWeLove 2020  
> Prompt: Hope Remains in the Galaxy
> 
> because I'm slowly starting to write more reylo and I love these sad space idiots

Sometimes, Rey wonders if Jakku marked her too much. She’s used to solitude, and she seeks it out more than she should. Finn doesn’t let her squirrel herself away when they get back to base; for now, that’s the newly recovered _Tantive IV_. Leia’s narrowed their potential main base locations down to a few systems, but last Rey heard it’s still not decided. The First Order keeps expanding its reach, and the Resistance has too. They need a base hidden enough to be safe, but close enough to hyperspace lanes they can contact allies if they need to. Or travel to win them.

That task has fallen to Rey and Finn more than she anticipated. Rey knows her way around a staff, a lightsaber, a blaster, any ship she can get her hands on. But Rey doesn’t know her way around people, not yet. She’s supposed to be a legend. She’s supposed to be the last living Jedi. Trouble is, Rey still isn’t sure if she really _is_ a Jedi.

She has old Jedi texts, so ancient they’re spelled in dead languages on bound books made of paper and leather. She has Luke’s Force ghost, however sporadically he appears and however obtuse he insists on being. She has the Force – the Light, a bright ocean of flowing serenity. And, at times, something else. Something cold and hungry and _wanting_. Something born of Jakku. Something Rey never wants to feel _ever_ again.

Maybe that’s why she did it. Maybe she couldn’t stand feeling that same cold emptiness pressing in on that girl.

Maybe the cold under her skin turned to ice, and she had to burn it away somehow.

Finn takes her to the _Tantive_ ’s mess hall before she can disappear into her quarters – sparse, bare-walled, but close enough to home for its proximity to the people she cares about. (Well, almost everyone. But someday, Ben will be here too. She has to believe that.)

“Blue milk, huh?” Finn regards the liquid with a suspicious eye, though Rey suspects he’s playing it up for her benefit. “I usually prefer the green stuff.”

Rey thinks of the sea cows on Ahch-To and gulps down the blue milk. “Trust me, blue is better,” she mutters.

Finn waits until she’s finished her dinner – the biggest helping they’d serve, because Rey still can’t help but eat like the mess might run out of everything by tomorrow. It’s a delicate dance, eating her fill and accepting the rationing for the good of everyone. Rey still eats with her bowl or plate tucked between her arms as she hunches over her food. No one here will steal from her, she _knows_ that, but it’s a habit. Desert-forged habits forged are hard to break.

“You did the right thing,” Finn says as they return their used plates and leave the mess. “You helped her.” Finn nods over to the newest addition to the Resistance – a slim Cathar girl with bright yellow eyes and a fine covering of tan fur over her whole body. She picks a last chunk of meat out of her stew before slurping the remaining liquid down with a smack of her lips.

Rey meets her bright eyes for a moment, smiling as the girl waves. She has a feline smile, full of sharp teeth and the easy grace that seems to come naturally to her. She deserves a better life, and maybe now she’ll have one.

But Rey remembers how she found the girl too, how the cool brush of anger lashed out of her curls around her fingers again, inviting and tempting and so, _so_ easy to give in to.

“Not the right way,” Rey whispers. “Not the Jedi way.”

“Okay,” Finn answers. “So do it the Jedi way next time. But you still helped her, gave her a better life. That’s something.”

Rey accepts his hug and tries to think of all the things the Cathar girl – Sasar, Rey thinks she said is her name – can do now, the many lives she can choose. She’s safe to do that, now.

“Thanks,” Rey says. The back of her head starts to itch, right under her middle bun. “Think I’ll go meditate for a bit, clear my head.”

Finn nods. He’s used to her taking some time for herself once they’re back from a mission. Sometimes, if she asks, he mediates with her. The more time they spend meditating together, the more Rey suspects he feels the call of the Force too. His signature in the Force is too bright, too aware, too attuned to the threads of life around him for a non-sensitive. But today, Rey needs to lose herself in the flow of the Force alone. She bids Finn a quick goodbye and goes back to her quarters.

They’re spartan and too bright, like all the quarters on the _Tantive IV_. In the Jakku sun, the walls would blind her without her goggles (pieces of her mask scavenged from a stormtrooper’s helmet). The slim bed is so narrow Rey’s knees always hang off when she curls up to sleep. Space is as cold as desert nights, but at least here she has a thicker blanket.

Rey strips out of her white travel clothes, stuffs them in the sonic refresher, and slips on a warmer tunic – the black one she scavenged from the _Falcon_ ’s innards – with grey pants and the thickest socks out of her three pairs. It’s still strange having multiple sets of things, having _options_ for what she wears.

She settles onto the floor, legs crossed like Luke told her, and closes her eyes.

The Force wraps around her quickly in swirling, icy pinpricks of anger shot through with the soft caress of compassion. Rey didn’t have time to clear her head; now everything is more intense, frantic for being shoved down over a few days of space travel.

_Balance. Powerful light, powerful darkness._

The Force hums, sucks the sound from her ears. Rey keeps her eyes stubbornly shut.

“It’s not a good time.”

The ghost of Ben’s weight settles in front of her, close enough his body heat grazes the edges of her awareness.

“It never is,” he says. 

The shards of anger dance faster around her. Rey knows, technically, it’s the Force she should blame for connecting them only when her guard is down. But it’s so much easier to blame _him_.

“Can’t you just leave?” she snaps, her fingers tightening around her knees. “I’m not in the mood.”

“Bad mission?” Ben asks, as if she hadn’t spoken. (Is he Kylo now? Sometimes, Rey can’t tell.)

Rey’s throat tightens. “Good mission,” she counters. “Bad ending.” It’s not quite accurate; the mission itself was a success. Their supply stop, however peacefully it ended, was not. They got their supplies, yes. They took Sasar with them, stole her away from a life of slavery and gave her a home here with the Resistance. But Rey knows a Jedi might not approve of her methods in freeing Sasar.

“You’ve had those before,” Ben says. “What’s different now?” Force, she _hates_ how gentle his voice is, how close to a lover’s soothing whisper it is. They’re enemies. She should be dueling him, trying to rid the galaxy of the Supreme Leader, cut off the head of the First Order. (No, she can’t do that. Another higher-up would take up the mantle, and they’d have the same fight still.)

(She refuses to think that maybe, she can’t kill him because he’s still _Ben_.)

“I’m not giving you anything,” Rey answers through gritted teeth. “No intel, nothing. So just go.”

Ben’s annoyance flares like a whistling tea kettle through the bond. And yet, he still speaks to her gently, softly. Like he’s _worried_ , of all things.

“I’m not asking for intel, Rey. I’m asking about _you_. What’s wrong?”

She should find the open thread between them and snap it. She should open her eyes, walk away, maybe go work on the _Falcon_ with Chewie. But Rey stays where she is and remembers how Ben’s hand trembled by firelight, the warmth of his fingers as they brushed hers. She remembers how when she felt most alone, trapped in the suffocating grip of loss and pain and _dark_ , he sat before her patiently. He listened. He _understood_. He told her she wasn’t alone. And she believed him.

Rey reaches out to his mind, brushes the edges, invites him in. More than anyone, he’ll understand.

Rey shows him the crowded port, teeming with an overflowing sample of the galaxy’s criminals and unsavory types. She shows him the low ration supply on the Falcon, the meager helping of water bread and instant caf that passed for a meal (more than she had on Jakku, but Rey is used to proper meals now).

(She doesn’t mean for her pinched stomach, her restless worry over food to seep through the bond, but it flares up too fast to stop.)

She shows him the spike of panic she felt through the Force. She shows him the Cathar girl, slender as the fern stems on Takodana, flinching away from the Rodian holding her up by her metal collar. She lets Ben feel the sudden sweep of cold down her legs when the girl’s whimper sounded too much like Rey’s whimpers when she spent a hungry night curled in her AT-AT after a fruitless day of scavenging.

The Cathar girl held a bitten-off ration bar – not even overly valuable. But Rey knew the pains that drove her to claw and scratch at the Rodian, her master or perhaps someone she stole from. Rey wasn’t sure, because that didn’t matter.

The girl was _hungry_.

Rey nearly closes off the memory, but Ben whispers against the barrier before she can throw it up. He doesn’t enter by force. Just inviting. Offering.

Rey shows him the rest – ordering the Rodian to let go, trying a mind trick when he wouldn’t, feeling something sharp lodge in her throat as the girl struggled and weakened.

She didn’t _mean_ to, not really. Rey only meant to push the mind trick harder, but somehow her hand came up and the Rodian was choking as she shoved into his mind.

Rey pawed through the Rodian’s scattered thoughts like a scavenge heap. She picked out everything about the girl, and she pulled and twisted and _broke_ until the Rodian’s scream broke her trance and Finn’s hand shook her free.

Rey’s throat thickens as she opens her eyes and finds Ben sitting cross-legged in front of her. His breath stirs a wisp of hair curled against his mouth. He’s close enough she could touch him, if she liked.

“Like I said,” Rey mumbles, “not the right way.”

Ben’s eyes blink open. Rey could lose herself in those twin pools of hazel, if she wanted.

“Not the Jedi way,” Ben allows. “But the quickest way. And I don’t think that Rodian will own other slaves anytime soon.”

“He can’t do a lot of things now,” Rey snaps. “I broke something in him. And I didn’t even stop to _fix it_. I broke it and I didn’t have to.”

Ben falls silent and brushes away the loose strands tickling at the corner of his mouth. “If that was the only way to save the girl,” he finally says, “would you do it again?”

“Of course not. There’s nothing left of whatever I broke. I can’t do it again.” Rey looks away to the unforgiving white walls of her room. Asking Ben seemed like a much better idea in her head.

Ben huffs. “If you could go back to the moment and change what you did or repeat it, what would you choose? If this was the only way to help the girl?”

“But it wasn’t! There were a dozen other things I could’ve done.” Rey tries not to lash out, but _Force_ , he’s missing the point. She could have just bartered for the girl, paid for the ration stick, kept herself in check and used a Jedi mind trick so the Rodian would let go. She could have looked into the Rodian’s eyes, so close in height to hers, and seen just another creature trying to survive in this galaxy. She could have taken Sasar without harming him. She could have convinced him he never wanted to own slaves again, or convinced him to be kinder with little more than a wave of her hand.

“You were kinder than I might have been.”

Rey scoffs. “The First Order has many slaves, don’t you? I’ve seen the work camps.”

Ben falls silent.

Rey closes her eyes and faces straight again, the Force a rising hum around her. Light tangles with Dark, warmth with cold, compassion with rage. Rey searches through the mess, pulling threads aside until she finds the one connecting her to Ben. No, not a single thread; somehow, over the months, it’s grown to a tapestry, an impossible network of connections and feelings and echoes passed back and forth. If she wants to cut this tie, it’ll take hours, days, weeks. Far longer than she has.

Rey sighs and opens her eyes.

She finds only the wall. Ben is gone.

The Force changes around her, sweeps colder around her shoulders. Rey shivers and pulls herself from the fitful meditation in favor of turning to the Jedi texts with her blanket slung around her back. She’ll meditate later. It was little use this time anyway.

One standard week later, the _Tantive_ sets down on Ajan Kloss. The jungle world teems with the Force, bright with threads of life and ties to the world beyond, and Rey doesn’t feel quite so alone here. The Light is closer here, and she needs it.

Two standards days later, a ship touches down and their numbers double overnight.

“Rey, come on,” Rose calls, running past with something like hope burned bright into her eyes. “One of the work camps went offline. They’re here to join!”

Work camps. Rey welcomes the newcomers – some familiar faces captured by the First Order, but most entirely new. And late that night when the song of the jungle keeps her awake, Rey reaches out to Ben.

To her surprise, the Force obliges. Ben blinks into view in just his pants, and this time Rey has enough composure to keep herself from reacting. Still, she keeps her gaze stubbornly on his face.

“Work camps?”

Ben’s mouth works to the side. “I don’t know what you mean.”

But when Rey looks into his eyes, she smiles. And perhaps more importantly, so does he.


End file.
